by Jane Yolen
"Go back!" Jakkin shouted. "To the water. Go back." But the little dragon stood by his side and urged him up with its nose.
Jakkin stood unsteadily, dizzy with pain, just as the drakk started down again. He leaned against the dragon, trying at once to shield it and to use it as a support. He held the knife in his other hand and waited. He knew that he would have only one more chance at the horror, and he knew he dared not fail.
The drakk dove. Its hissing preceded it and its snaky head was as straight as a spear. It counted on the hypnotic effect of its milky eyes to keep its prey still.
Jakkin thought at his dragon, Do not look straight on it. Look to one side. And when I move, move away from me. But not till I cry it. Only the faintest wisp of color came back in reply, and Jakkin prayed that the hatchling understood.
He could feel his jaw tighten and a sickness compounded of pain and fear growing in his belly. What he had felt on the roundup was nothing compared to this. And he knew that if he and the dragon died out in the sands, they might never be found. He remembered his mother crying over his father's bloody corpse. No one would cry over his.
The diving drakk seemed to hang in the air, unmoving, yet careening toward him at a speed too fast for reckoning. Jakkin stood still for moments, for hours, for eternities. Then at the last minute, he shoved the dragon one way, threw himself the other, screaming, "Move. Move, thou beauty!"
The dragon shot away from him, and Jakkin planted both feet wide to steady himself. He held the knife overhead.
The drakk, torn between the dragon smells and the true and false dragon forms, broke its dive for an instant, as if to veer off. In that instant, Jakkin thrust the blade under and into the drakk's neck where it joined the body.
Hot, foul-smelling drakk blood poured out over Jakkin's sleeve, coating it with a greasy, purplish color. The odor made Jakkin gag, then gasp, then collapse. He never saw the drakk fall, but it landed heavily next to him, its talons opening and closing in its death throes. One talon caught on Jakkin's outer shirt and ripped it open from neck to hem.
Cautiously, the dragon trotted over to the drakk. It shook its head as if to rid its nose slits of the terrible smell, then, carefully, from behind, it shoved the drakk body with one foot as far from the shelter as it could. Then it went back to Jakkin and nudged him with its nose. When there was no response, the dragon lay down next to Jakkin and began, purposefully, to lick his bloody wrist and arm with its rough tongue. One swipe, two, three, and the wound was clean, though blood continued to seep. The dragon curled its body around the boy, but it did not sleep. Every now and then its tongue touched the edges of the wound as if, by licking, it could close them.
Jakkin came to, once, to a great sunburst of color in his head, then passed out again, his face half-buried in the sand.
***
JAKKIN WOKE IN pain. There was a vise on one wrist and a burning ache along his other arm. And there was a horrible smell all around him that, combined with the constant pain, made him want to throw up. With an effort, he controlled his stomach. He moaned, almost experimentally, and there was a sudden cool hand on his forehead.
"Shhh. Hush. It's all right," a voice whispered in his ear. Recognizing the voice, he opened his eyes, expecting to see the white walls of the hospice and to find that he had been dreaming. He saw instead the dark, shadowy outline of the shelter nearby. He turned his head toward the voice and stared.
"You." He couldn't think for a moment. The awful smell confused him. "You..."
Akki smiled down at him, her dark hair falling over one eye. She brushed it back with her hand. "This is getting to be a habit," she said.
Suddenly it all fit together. The one person he had not suspected of spying on him.
"You have awfully large feet for a girl," he said, and pushed himself up to a sitting position, despite the pain. "Almost as big as mine."
She laughed. "That's funny, I think. What does it mean?"
"It means I found one of your footprints by the weed patch. One you neglected to broom away. Only I thought it was Likkarn's," Jakkin said, still surprised.
"I didn't think I missed any," she answered.
"Sloppy," he said, and laughed.
"I learned my bad habits from you," Akki said. "How do you think I found you in the first place?"
"That night you pulled me in out of the cold?"
"Yes. I got up extra early and broomed away your steps."
"And tracked them back at the same time," he said. There was admiration in his voice.
"Yes." She smiled again, acknowledging his admiration.
"I guess I have a lot to be grateful to you for," he said slowly, looking around casually. He hoped that in all her snooping she had never actually seen the dragon. Maybe she just thought he had built himself a retreat here, an oasis for his days of Bond-Off.
"It's outside," she said.
He shifted the weight off his aching arm and looked at his wrist, which was expertly bandaged. "The drakk?"
"What's left of the drakk. You nearly took the neck off its body," she said. "And with a blunt kitchen knife that's impressive."
This time Jakkin smiled. "Left-handed, too," he said, glad to be able to boast about something to her.
"And your dragon is still standing guard over the drakk's body. Kicking sand in its face every now and then. The sand seems to help keep the smell down." She wrinkled her nose. "It's still pretty awful, but the dragon keeps kicking. What a wonder worm."
"Oh." All his fears were contained in the one word. Akki heard it and looked at him slowly.
"I won't tell," she said. "I'll never tell." v Jakkin kept staring at the bandage on his wrist rather than looking again at Akki. The bandage material was unusual. He looked up and for the first time realized that Akki was wearing his old shirt, the one he had given the dragon. It had no buttons left and was tied up in front in a big knot. Her bond bag showed. And a lot of her skin. He looked away. Then he looked back shyly.
She seemed to guess his thoughts and gestured toward herself. "This shirt was too dirty to put around your wrist, so I tore my own up. Then I used this. It was split up the front, from the hem to the neck. The drakk got it, I guess. So I had to tie it like this. It smells, though. And so do you." She hesitated a moment and added, "And so do I." She actually blushed under his stare.
His wrist suddenly throbbed, and he winced.
"The wound was clean," Akki went on, speaking in the same amused voice she had used in the hospice. "The dragon was licking it and it had already started to heal over. There are lots of old stories about that, though I had never seen it in real life. That dragon tongues can heal, I mean. Your other arm was burned a bit from the drakk's blood, but the shirt helped. And the dragon had kicked sand on it, too. That seemed to help as well."
Jakkin grunted and got to his knees. He was dizzy and started to tumble back. Akki was at his side and helped him up. He wasn't sure he wanted to have to lean on her, but he had no choice: It was either lean or fall. He would rather have died than fall in front of her, so he leaned. She was both soft and hard and they both blushed. This time she looked away first.
"I fed your dragon," she said.
"What?"
"Juice from the wort patch. Wouldn't you know, I burned myself on one of the stalks." She held up her hand but it was already too dark to see the burn clearly.
"We'd better get back to the bondhouse. The moons have both risen." She helped him stand and put her arm around his waist and under his arm. She came no higher than his shoulder.
"You must have very big feet for such a small girl," he said.
She laughed again. "I do."
They stopped a moment, and he called out loud to the dragon, "Take care, my mighty healer." He was unprepared for the great rising bursts of color that came into his head, reds and oranges and shining golds. He stumbled and put his hand to his temples.
"What's wrong?"
"The dragon ... my head..." He was confused for a moment. T
hen he realized that the colors filled him up—made him stronger—but did not threaten to overflow his mind. Bank thy fires a bit, he thought at the dragon. The colors ebbed slightly. "That's better," he said out loud.
"You must be weak from blood loss," Akki said.
The dragon came over and nuzzled against his thigh, turning its black eyes on Akki for a moment. Then it walked over to her and licked her free hand.
"It likes you," said Jakkin, surprised at how jealous that made him feel.
"Only because I have been helping you," she said. But she tickled the dragon behind its ears, and the dragon began a gentle thrumming under her hands.
Thou fickle worm, Jakkin thought at the dragon, but aloud he said, "Look, Akkhan has started down. We had better get back."
"Not without the drakk," Akki said.
"The drakk!"
"Listen: You stink, I stink. And it's not a smell that usually accompanies a boy and girl out at night together. If we bring the drakk back, they'll just think we were out pair-bonding and got set upon by that ... that horror. Oh, I'll tell them quite a tale about how you saved me and..."
Jakkin interrupted. "But they'll know. Drakks don't attack humans."
Akki thought a minute, running her free hand through her hair. "But hadn't you been out with the hatchlings this afternoon?"
"Well, yes, but how did you know?"
"I know ... a lot," she said. "We'll tell them we think the drakk smelled the hatchlings on you."
"And knew that I had had a hand in killing his mate and chicks," Jakkin finished.
"I don't know if drakk think that way," said Akki.
"Or think at all," added Jakkin. "But who can say? That baggy piece of waste attacked us and I fought it off. And you, being a nurse, nursed me." He was really enjoying the story.
"And we'll bring the stinking carcass home and be heroes." She smiled.
"Until someone asks where I got the knife."
Akki frowned. "Oh, that."
Jakkin nodded his head. "That."
"This will take a bit more thinking," said Akki.
Jakkin stood apart from her, feeling stronger. "We'd better think as we go."
"You take the drakk. If you can. I don't yant to touch it. And the knife. I'll do the brooming," Akki said.
He went over to the sand-covered drakk, circling from the back and kicking it several times to be sure it was really dead. He looked at Akki in case she was laughing, but drakk were no laughing matter. The drakk did not move. He picked it up by its talons with his left hand and slung it over his shoulder. It must have weighed over five kilos and it still smelled. He hated the feel of it against his back. He wondered if he would ever get the stench out of his skin.
Akki followed behind, brooming their path. She used a long broomer with a collapsible handle. "See," she said brightly, "no bending."
"I never thought of that," Jakkin said ruefully. She seemed to think of a lot of things he had never considered. He wondered how many other things she knew about: brooms and hospices, dragons—and men. There had been talk about her at the nursery, about her and Sarkkhan. Guesses, really. Nursery gossip. No one knew much about her for sure, though Slakk often supplied tidbits he swore were true. She had arrived at the nursery about three years earlier, Jakkin seemed to remember. Someone said Sarkkhan had found her at a baggery. Someone else had once suggested she was the doctor's girl. She seemed to go where she wanted and when she wanted, almost as if she were free. But she was a bonder; her bag said as much. Jakkin suddenly remembered her standing by his bed at the hospice and scripting something. If she could script, she could read. And if she could read, she was either free, or very close to someone free. The doctor. Or Master Sarkkhan. Yet the way she had been acting this evening didn't sound as if she were Sarkkhan's girl. She talked about a boy and girl out together. She had followed Jakkin's tracks. She had rescued him. She had promised not to tell. If she were a free man's mate, pair-bonding with someone, surely she wouldn't act that way. Or would she? It was a riddle, a puzzle that Jakkin could not answer.
They walked most of the way in silence.
Jakkin even stopped thinking after a while, because walking and carrying the heavy drakk took most of his remaining strength.
Near the nursery road, Akki spoke at last. "I still haven't thought of any way to explain the knife," she said.
"Nor have I."
But in the end, no one asked. There was a great fuss when they set the dead drakk on the bondhouse steps and the smell woke the other bonders and set the hen dragons roaring. Jakkin and Errikkin, accompanied by a complaining Slakk and a sleepy Trikko, were sent to bury the drakk beyond the compound. They finished just before Dark-After and hurried back for showers.
Jakkin was allowed to sleep the morning away. He did not see Akki again until that night.
15
DINNER WAS A special occasion, the first party since the twenty-fifth anniversary of the nursery's founding. In honor of the drakk killers, Kkarina had made an elaborate cake covered with a deep red frosting and a candied figure of a dead eggsucker, complete with caramelized eyes and a bone-handled kitchen knife rising out of its stomach.
Even Master Sarkkhan ate with the bonders. Just back from a successful trip to a minor pit, the nursery owner sat with the older bonders and regaled them with stories of his early fights. Only Likkarn was absent. Rumor had it that he had cursed Sarkkhan to his face, calling him "gold master" and "drakk dodger." Jakkin wondered if the old man had been smoking weed again or if he were really jealous of Jakkin's success.
Let him sulk in his room, Jakkin thought to himself. But he suddenly felt sorry for the old man who had led them all so fearlessly against the drakk colony. Now that he no longer thought that Likkarn was spying on him, threatening his hatchling, Jakkin could afford to feel sympathy.
At the dinner's end, Jakkin was summoned to Sarkkhan's table, where the master, still in the red-and-gold suit he had worn to the pit, presented him with a handful of gold. Jakkin had never been face-to-face with the nursery owner before. The man was big, massive, with broad shoulders and large hands that were covered with red-gold hair. He had an expansive smile.
"Here," Sarkkhan said, his bushy red beard waggling as he spoke. "Your bag is not yet full. Fill it with the thanks of the nursery. One dead drakk means many live dragons."
Jakkin took the gold and opened his bag with two fingers, never taking his eyes off Sarkkhan. He slid the coins into the pouch and heard them clink, one after another: one, two, three, four, five. Then he murmured his embarrassed thanks.
"The thanks are entirely on our side, young Jakkin," said Sarkkhan. "I've had my eye on you for some time."
Jakkin wondered briefly what Sarkkhan meant by that. Then he managed to smile back and add, boldly, "Some thanks and coin belong to Akki as well," he said, appending the ritual words: "Her bag is not yet full."
Sarkkhan houghed through his nose like a disgruntled stud dragon. From die boys' table there came a giggle. Jakkin recognized Slakk's laugh.
Sarkkhan's eyes narrowed and his mouth grew thin, though it still smiled.
"She was there with me. She helped," Jakkin said.
"So I've heard," Sarkkhan replied. "We appreciate your fairness. As to paying her gold..."
Akki stood at the pair-bonders' table and called out loudly, "I do not fill my bag with Sarkkhan gold." Then she walked out of the room.
Jakkin watched her leave. He started to go after her, but Sarkkhan's hand on his arm stopped him.
"Let her go," the nursery owner said. "She has a head harder than dragon bone, and Fool's Pride to match. Like her mother. Go back to your seat." It was not a suggestion but a command.
Jakkin sat down again between Errikkin and Slakk and replayed the scene in his mind. It was all suggestion; it could be read many ways. Was Sarkkhan jealous? Was he angry? Or was he merely amused? The other boys chattered around him as they finished off extra helpings of the cake. Jakkin seemed to be in two places at on
ce: running through the conversation with Sarkkhan once again and sitting next to the boys. As he heard Sarkkhan's voice saying "Fool's Pride," Trikko was eating a second slice of cake—Trikko, who usually seemed to exist on takk and water.
"Couldn't you have left me some scrapings of icing?" asked Slakk.
"Have a heart," Errikkin said. "You've had three helpings already. Jakkin..."
Jakkin turned slowly and focused on Errikkin. "Yes?"
"Tell us again. How did you manage to kill it?"
Jakkin repeated the tale once again, but his mind was really wandering outside with Akki. He could hardly wait for dinner to be over to find her.
***
AKKI WAS NOT in the bondhouse at all. Jakkin finally came upon her by the southwest corner of the building. She was sitting in the sand, her back against the wall. She was fiddling with her bond bag and looking out into the distance, beyond the copse of spikka trees where the first drakk had been killed.
"Akki," he said quietly, and slid down the wall to sit next to her.
She didn't bother looking at him, but let the bag fall against her chest. It didn't make a sound. "Leave me alone."
"But you didn't leave me alone when I needed it."
"He knows I won't take his gold. I've told him so before. There is always a hidden price to pay. No man's gold will go into my bag." She placed her hand protectively over the leather pouch and spoke in a fierce undertone.
"Sarkkhan?" He found himself whispering back.
"That bullheaded, stone-prided ... I hate him." Her voice was loud again, and hard.
Jakkin sat up on his knees and turned to face her. "Now, wait a minute," he said, putting his hands on her face and forcing her to look right at him. "The gold in your bag was my idea, not Master Sarkkhan's."
"Master!" She spit the word out.
"Yes, Master Sarkkhan. Until I am a master, he is mine. And yours."
"No man is my master," she said.
He was shocked into silence.
"No man's gold will fill my bag," she said, and jangled her bag at him. It was totally empty. He reached over and crumpled it in his hand. Not even a grave coin. He had never known any bonder without that single coin.